Columns

If there is one thing that I heard near universally while knocking on over 1,000 doors this year, it’s that people are tired of politics and this campaign. When we go to the polls on Tuesday, it will have been 596 days since the first candidate announced that he was running for president.

In reading the letters, comments and columns printed in these pages over the years, one could easily get the impression that holders of “progressive left” values are responsible for everything from the Biblical Flood to the Black Plague to the entire national debt, not to mention adolescent acne.

The Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce co-sponsored two candidate forums this year, featuring candidates for local races including Lancaster City Council District 3, Lancaster County sheriff, S.C. House District 45 and U.S. House District 5.

Certainly, most people have been paying close attention to the presidential race, whether they wanted to or not. It has truly been hard to avoid.

The leaders of the Republican Party forfeited its future when they allowed Donald Trump and his radical-right followers to hijack their party, and America won’t know the future of its partisan politics until after the election. Political pundits predict that Hillary Clinton will be elected president despite her unpopularity, and that the Republican Party will be left in disarray.

I would like to comment on an article in Wednesday’s Lancaster News entitled “Harris, Blackmon discuss city’s finances, crime, business climate.”
As I said on Oct. 24 during the forum, running for city council again was a hard decision for me to make. Maya Angelou stated, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.”

Welcome to the new age of moral outrage! I have been listening to various news shows, and all are caught up in the various scandals of the hour.
Trump has taken center stage for his womanizing, while Hillary hides behind various network apologists for her revelations through WikiLeaks. The other two candidates are not outrageous enough to warrant notice, even though Johnson’s involvement with the marijuana industry would have been a big story a few years ago, but there seems to be no interest today.

I have often played Monday morning quarterback after seeing one of my favorite teams lose a game when a coach calls a play I disagree with or watching a quarterback make an errant throw. I make these criticisms with an unmistakable certainty that the outcome would have been different if only I would have been the decision-maker instead of the other person.

It has almost been a year now since I decided to run for the State House District 45 seat. Running for the S.C. House has been one of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life. Getting out to talk with people about their dreams and aspirations for Lancaster County and South Carolina is something I will always cherish and it’s something I look forward to doing more of should you elect me as your next state representative.
Better roads

I have watched both presidential debates, listened each
day to CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
As a pastor who was created by God to be African-American, I have become utterly disgusted as well as enlightened by this presidential election process. It has shown the ignorance, brokenness, hypocrisy and unresolved issues of race relations in our country and unfortunately in my city. It has shown the power of media to “spin” facts and confuse voters.